


law abiding permanent residents

by allonsytosherwoodforest, friendlybomber



Series: the unholy trinity [1]
Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Canon Compliant, Crack, Gen, M/M, Prison, Prison Break AU, Washington Capitals, nicklas backstrom has lost his marbles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-10
Updated: 2017-10-10
Packaged: 2019-01-15 13:28:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,853
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12321981
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/allonsytosherwoodforest/pseuds/allonsytosherwoodforest, https://archiveofourown.org/users/friendlybomber/pseuds/friendlybomber
Summary: Nicky and Alex break out of prison. The kids help.





	law abiding permanent residents

“We could just kill another man.”

“Nicky, _no_.”

Nicky folded his hands on the metal table, a muscle working in his jaw. He looked sickly in prison orange, his blond hair sticky and matted. Against the backdrop of the yard, Nicky’s dead shark eyes seemed to glint with a special kind of crazy.

Nicky shrugged. “Do you have any better ideas?”

Alex ran his hands through his hair. “We could dig our way out. Use spoons from comissary.”

Nicky raised his eyebrows in a scoff. “Dig? What do you think this is, Grand Budapest Hotel?”

“No,” said Alex, “is prison. We either dig out or die in here. Your choice.”

Nicky didn’t blink. He simply looked at Alex, the crazy, icy Swedish gears turning in his head. Finally, he tipped his head, brushed back his hair, and said, “Fine. We dig.”

              

It began with spoons but quickly expanded to include every form of plastic cutlery Nicky and Alex could smuggle in from the prison commissary. Nicky stored them in a hole in his mattress. Alex wasn’t entirely certain how he cut it – it had, after all, began with spoons – but he didn’t ask. He was far past asking questions. At this point, he trusted Nicky with his life. Just his life, though. No one else’s.

Nicky produced the first of his mining tools after count. He held the spoon up to Alex wordlessly, then slowly inserted it into the stuffing of his mattress.

“Nicky, how’d you get that spoon in?” Alex asked.

Nicky’s face remained impassive.

“Oh,” Alex said.

By the end of the first month, Nicky couldn’t so much as touch his bed without drawing the telltale clacking of plastic cutlery. So, he just slept in Alex’s bed. He demanded he be little spoon.

But after two more weeks, Nicky smiled at Alex. It was time.

“Nicky, I not see you smile since we play Stars,” Alex said.

Nicky didn’t respond. He was still smiling. Alex’s palms were starting to feel clammy. If he looked into Nicky’s eyes any longer, he would see the exact date of his death reflected back at him.

              

“Alright boys,” Kuzy said. “Is time break Nicky and Ovi out. Burt, what’s your plan?”

Andre looked up from the mini whiteboard he held in his lap. He capped his expo marker and held up his plan. The boys crowded around his drawing.

“What is this?” Jakub asked.

“That’s me,” Andre said.

“And what’s this… squiggle?” Kuzy asked.

“That’s the car,” Andre said.

Kuzy and Jakub exchanged a look.

“Oh,” Jakub said.

“Is… breakaway car, yes?” Kuzy asked.

“I driving,” Andre said.

“Oh,” Kuzy said. He looked at Jakub. “Vee, you have other plan?”

Jakub took the whiteboard and the marker. He scrubbed his palm over it and began to draw furiously, the marker cap between his teeth. Kuzy and Andre tried to peek over his shoulder, but he held the whiteboard close to his chest. Finally, he recapped the marker and held up the whiteboard.

 Kuzy and Andre scrutinized it.

“Better,” Kuzy said.

“I driving,” Andre said.

"We’ll need more manpower,” Jakub ventured.

Kuzy looked considerate.

"Tom is suspended, he not busy. We ask him.”  

 

They started digging behind the washing machine known as Crazy-Eyed Susan. Alex and Nicky were model inmates; they got laundry duty for good behavior. Alex disabled the security camera using one of Nicky’s bed forks. Nicky pulled Crazy-Eyed Susan out and began chipping away at the cement floor.

Progress would be slow for any regular inmate, but Nicky and Alex weren’t regular inmates. They were six-foot European giants who made a living off of wearing knife shoes and wielding giant sticks and skating at other six-foot giants at top speed. Until Nicky… well…

They had made a considerable dent in the floor by the end of the first week. By the end of the month, they had a small tunnel dug beneath the prison.

“Is not going fast enough,” Alex said. He nuzzled his head into Nicky’s shoulder.

Nicky stared at the wall. “Just wait. One more month.”

“Okay Nicky,” Alex said. He kissed him on the cheek. “Whatever you say.”

Nicky was still staring at the wall. Two burn marks were probably about to appear in the concrete. Alex hugged him closer.

“One more month,” Nicky said.

 

Something went wrong. Nicky got moved from laundry duty to kitchen duty. It happened like this.

They were sitting at their table in the yard, plotting. Nicky still had his hockey flow, but Alex had buzzed his head because he thought it made him look “prison tough.” Apparently, it didn’t work. Another inmate approached them, his head _more_ buzzed and his bearing _more_ prison tough.

“The Great Eight, huh?” the inmate said.

“Keep walking,” Nicky said without looking up.

“I saw you in D.C. the night before I got busted,” the inmate said. He put his hand down on the table next to Alex. “You lost.”

“Things happen,” Alex said. “It’s all about making good shots and connecting on the ice.”

“Connecting on the power play,” Nicky said, staring at the inmate.

“Connecting on the power play,” Alex agreed.

“Oh,” the inmate said. He cracked his knuckles. “I bet you’re not so tough off the ice, Ovi.”

Nicky tensed. His jaw shifted. He kept staring at the inmate.

“Fuck off, little man,” Alex said.

He was ready for the first punch, and the second, but the second never came. Before he could even leap from his seat to fight back, Nicky had the inmate on the ground, straddling his waist, his teeth buried in the inmate’s neck. The guards pulled Nicky off before he could do any serious damage, but it was enough to get him reassigned to the kitchen where they could keep a better eye on him.

That meant less time to work on the tunnel. Alex still chipped away during laundry duty, but only because his new coworker was a Capitals fan and didn’t snitch. Still, without Nicky, progress had slowed to a crawl.

Good thing Nicky was a problem-solver.

By vibrating a knife just right at just the right frequency, Nicky found a way to break the lock on their cell door. They snuck out between guard rounds with their pillow case of plastic cutlery. Maybe it was the adrenaline, or the increased desperation, but they made better progress at night than they did in the day. They were really getting somewhere. It was only a matter of time.

Until they got caught.

It wasn’t that bad. They didn’t get _seen_. The guard just noticed the rolled-up blankets in their cell and decided to care and realized they weren’t world-famous hockey sensations Alexander Mikhailovich Ovechkin and Lars Nicklas Backstrom, but were, in fact, just rolled-up blankets, and so he stopped, rubbed his eyes, and let the panic sink in.

"Oh,” the guard said, and called in over his radio that two inmates had escaped.

Alex and Nicky saw the red flashing lights and heard the sirens and immediately knew their goose was cooked. They broke into a dead sprint toward the laundry room, gripping their pillow cases and going into “one minute left in third period and the Caps and Pens are _tied_ 3-3, Holtby deflects the shot and _Backstrom drives it down center, passes it to Ovi, he shoots and-”_ mode.

Alex, who always trusted Nicky with every single thing, was starting to have his doubts. “Why we in this mess again?” he huffed to Nicky as they rounded a corner.

Nicky didn’t respond, he simply put his head down and charged forward.

Alex was panting hard as they ran down the hallway. “We didn’t even kill Crosby! It wasn’t even someone important! It was just Seguin!”

Nicky still didn’t respond, but he smiled, which was somehow worse.

They made it to the laundry room and Nicky threw Crazy-Eyed Susan aside without a second glance. He and Alex were in the tunnel in an instant, chipping away at the cement wall desperately. There wasn’t really much they could do except hope they would miraculously dig their way out to freedom in one night before being caught and probably executed by the United States prison system. It was a long-shot, but so were their hopes of passing the second round of the playoffs, so it wasn’t an unfamiliar position.

They hadn’t been found yet, which was good. Their hands were starting to bleed, which was bad. Suddenly, Nicky paused, going very still, like a hunting dog before it mauls an innocent child. Alex looked to Nicky, uncertain.

“You hear that?” Nicky said.

“Sounds like voices,” Alex said.

“But from the other side of the wall…?” Nicky said.

“You think they found us?” Alex said.

“From the other side of the wall?” Nicky said.

They covered their heads as the wall caved in on them, dust and debris flying every which way. “Oh yeah,” Tom said as he burst through the wall, not like the Kool-Aid Man or anything, but not _unlike_ the Kool-Aid Man.

Nicky and Alex blinked at him. Kuzy’s head poked through the hole above Tom, who was, as a reminder, six-foot-three. “Good job, Whip. Now we find – oh,” said Kuzy.

Andre’s head appeared beneath Tom’s armpit. “Oh,” said Andre.

Jakub’s head appeared beneath Tom’s other armpit. “Oh,” said Jakub.

“Oh,” said Nicky and Alex.

They all stared at each other. It was, after all, a pretty awkward situation. Alex broke the silence.

“You have breakaway car?”

“ _Getaway_ car,” Nicky said.

“You have breakaway car?” Alex repeated

“I driving,” Andre said.

“At least we won’t survive to see court again,” Nicky said. He glanced behind him down the tunnel, where the voices of the guards echoed. They had found the hole. “Let’s go.”

They had a head start. The guards wouldn’t catch up to them so long as they kept moving. And Nicky and Alex had no intentions of getting caught again.

As they ran down the tunnel, Kuzy kept pace with Alex.

“You okay after prison?” he asked.

“I’m thug now,” Alex said.

“Okay,” Kuzy said. He nodded to Nicky. “Is Papa still batshit crazy?”

“Nicky isn’t crazy,” Alex said. “He’s just Nicky.”

“He tried to saw Tyler Seguin in half horizontally using his skate,” Kuzy said. “On the ice. In front of the Mites on Ice. And he almost succeeded.”

“He would have made it through the spinal cord if the refs hadn’t pulled him off,” Alex said. “It helped that I sat on Seguin’s head so he wouldn’t struggle.”

"Batshit crazy,” Kuzy said.

“Oh,” Alex said. He shrugged. “The things we do for love.”

"Uh, no,” Kuzy said. He looked at the dust covering them all from their prison break. “Well, yeah,” Kuzy said. He looked at Nicky, and then at Alex. “But… no.”

Alex laughed. “Less talking. More escaping. Come on Nicky, lots of spoons in outside world.”

They ran down the tunnel, leaving the prison behind them. Nicky smiled and gripped Alex’s hand and pulled him forward. They led the charge, their kids behind them, as they made one final breakaway to freedom.

 

 

 

              

                

                    

**Author's Note:**

> “It’s kinda funny,” Nicky said to a reporter. “There’s actually this rule in the NHL rulebook. If you successfully break out of prison, they /have/ to let you back in to keep playing hockey.”  
> “Ha ha,” said the reporter, before turning on heel and running for his life.  
> Whether that was true, or Gary Bettman was simply too scared to protest, was anyone’s guess.
> 
> and they lived happily ever after except tyler seguin


End file.
